‘Did taunts drive lover to kill her?'

murdering his fiancée if a series of taunts made him lose all self-control, a jury was told yesterday.

Stephen Ellis strangled lover Donna Rowe to death in a hotel room last summer just weeks before the couple - who met when Miss Rowe was having a lesbian relationship with his cousin Jenny Headlam - were due to marry.

Ellis claims he was provoked by a series of taunts during a row at a family wedding reception, including Miss Rowe saying she had "chosen the wrong cousin", unfavourable comparisons to her previous boyfriend and her not being good enough for his family.

Yesterday the jury of seven women and five men retired at Oxford Crown Court to consider whether Ellis was guilty of murder or manslaughter if he was provoked and lost his self-control, as his defence team claim. They resumed their deliberations this morning.

The jury has been told how the couple lived together in Axbridge Road in Whitley and had gone to Oxford and then Great Kimble, Bucks, for the wedding and reception respectively on Saturday, August 2.

Miss Rowe, a 29-year-old former Battle Hospital nurse, was found dead in Room 117 of the Travelodge at Peartree roundabout the next day.

Ellis, 26, has admitted strangling her.

Yesterday, during his closing speech, prosecutor Neil Moore said the jury should reject the claim that Ellis had been provoked beyond losing his self-control. "Clearly he was acting out of character, but just because it was out of character and it was unexpected does not mean he was provoked to kill Donna Rowe," he said.

Mr Moore said that if Ellis had lost all control his actions would have to be instantaneous and spontaneous and he would snap out of it quickly.

Yet Miss Rowe had been strangled with the electric cable of a hair-dryer, probably throttled as well, had 96cm of a tie forced into her mouth, shirts tucked under her head and a pillow put across her face.

"These were a series of quite careful, deliberate acts, are they not?" he said. "Did he do them because he lost self-control or because he got angry because he was embarrassed and stressed?"

Ellis has said he did not realise what he had done for many hours. Mr Moore said: "You can't be in some sort of daze for 12 hours, can you?"

Of the lesbian taunt, Mr Moore said the trial was the first time Ellis had mentioned it. He did not tell police about it when he was first arrested.

But Richard Ferguson, QC, said Ellis had been honest and open and that there was the "spectre" of Miss Rowe's affair with his cousin.

"We suggest the only reason he could have snapped was he had been driven beyond endurance," he said. There was the comparison not only with the previous boyfriend but thrown up in his face was that she was going to marry the wrong cousin.

"That's a pretty nasty remark and if repeated and repeated and part of a tirade it could be conduct that would result in a temporary loss of control."